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Jim Geraghty

The “Truther” element that sours “Iron Man 3″

First, the makers of Iron Man 3 decided that the Mandarin’s propaganda videos would make the villain really, really resemble and echo Osama bin Laden. I don’t think that’s necessarily offensive or exploitative; I think that’s hitting the notes that stir fear in our subconscious in a very effective way. (Ben Kingsley talks a bit about it here.) He hates the United States of America for reasons that seem unclear, he’s determined to teach us a lesson, and he launches random, explosive terror attacks at various targets.

But making the Mandarin a ‘fake’ figure, created by a greedy Pentagon contractor who seeks to “control supply and demand of the War on Terror” … well, it’s one step away from joining the 9/11 Truthers…

Except that the terrorists we see in the real world are not in fact driven by ‘anonymous behind the scenes guys’ like shady defense contractors. The Boston bombers were not secretly being manipulated by Halliburton. The guys who killed our ambassador in Benghazi were not being paid by somebody who wanted a fat contract to provide embassy security in the future. This is conspiracy-theory thinking, and not only does it not fit in well in an Iron Man movie… it takes what had been this movie series’ most thoroughly menacing, frightening figure and turns him into a quick, cheap joke, and refocuses us on Guy Pearce’s Killian villain. Meh.

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The truther element is bad enough, but the real crime is how in the process they turned Iron Man’s greatest villain and reduced him to a punchline. Star Trek Into Darkness goes down a very similar and equally unfortunate road incidentally.

Yep. One of the reasons I was disappointed in the movie. The reveal lets most of the air out of the plot.
I also was really disappointed in the “swarm of drones” at the end. It would have been much better if each one was actually a person that Stark had made a suit for.

I hate Iron Man. And I have never been impressed in Downey’s or Paltrow’s acting in it. They are boring.

Blake on May 17, 2013 at 8:23 PM

I’ve always loved the idea of Iron Man in a universe of people that are given power, but Stan Lee apparently always intended the comic to be an attack on US industry in much the way that the Hulk was an attack on the US military.

Spoiler alert — They also have the vice-president involved in this plot, and while he looks a bit like Cheney, Elvis left the building 4 1/2 years ago on that one (and the bald head could also easily make you say he looks a little bit like Biden. But nobody’s going to make that connection, because it’s impossible to think of Joe Biden as a mastermind of tying his shoe, let alone a plot to take over the U.S. government — the idea is too fanciful for either political side to believe).

Spoiler alert — They also have the vice-president involved in this plot, and while he looks a bit like Cheney, Elvis left the building 4 1/2 years ago on that one (and the bald head could also easily make you say he looks a little bit like Biden. But nobody’s going to make that connection, because it’s impossible to think of Joe Biden as a mastermind of tying his shoe, let alone a plot to take over the U.S. government — the idea is too fanciful for either political side to believe).

jon1979 on May 17, 2013 at 8:44 PM

Oh, I don’t know. I can see Biden as an idiot that is willing to conspire with criminals in the hope of healing a crippled grandchild or something. Of course, given that Cheney more or less sold his soul to the homosexual meme because of his gay daughter, maybe it works for him, too.

Do you mean the British guy pretending to be Asian, or the actor stooge of the Military Industrial Complex?
Feels like the wrong direction to me.

Count to 10 on May 17, 2013 at 9:26 PM

The fact that they even tied terrorism to the ME was surprising to me. When has a popular movie done that?

And I disagree with Guy Pierce’s character being a defense contractor. I saw him as a kook who was using the government as a wallet and defrauding them. A defense contractor has wares to sell and there was no way that Pierce’s character was going to ever give/sell the end product. He just used the government to fund his R&D.

And I disagree with Guy Pierce’s character being a defense contractor. I saw him as a kook who was using the government as a wallet and defrauding them. A defense contractor has wares to sell and there was no way that Pierce’s character was going to ever give/sell the end product. He just used the government to fund his R&D.

Stan Lee apparently always intended the comic to be an attack on US industry in much the way that the Hulk was an attack on the US military.

Count to 10 on May 17, 2013 at 8:43 PM

Stan Lee has long held quite liberal opinions. He’s just managed to cloak it well enough in cheap paper, ink and pigment though the mask started to slip around the mid to late nineties as he began to go his own way and the comic book industry bubbled and burst. Liberalism is rife in the comic book industry.